The journal had been removed from Sam's possession, without his reading anymore of it, shortly after he read the first couple of pages. Dean kept it with him. Kept it away from his brother's prying eyes, but he wrote in it, kept it next to the knife under his pillow at night.

"Dean?" Sam started as he stepped out of the bathroom, hair still dripping and face red from the hot water, for once the motel in which they were staying seemed to have a good heating system. He stopped when he realized his brother was asleep, with his clothes on, shoes on, again, and had his journal on his chest, pen dangling from the hand that was resting beside him.

Sam sighed, realized that his brother had, yet again, stayed up so long and tired his body to the point of dropping. Dean never used to be like this. He never wore himself out to the point of sheer and total exhaustion. Sam shook his head, went to his brother, took off his boots, and took the journal off of his chest and his pen out of his hand and sat down on his bed, and ran a hand over his long face.

"What do I do for you Dean?" he asked quietly starring at his sleeping brother, watching him jerk and twitch. Sam knew from experience, that the minimal jerking and twitching wasn't the nightmares. They were just the prelude to them, and that he could have an hour or five minutes before the real terror started to kick in. When his breathing changed, that was the time to wake him. At first, Sam woke him when he jerked but when he did Dean didn't understand why, he couldn't remember the dreams. So he learned just when to start the process of waking his brother. He wished he knew more, knew how to stop them, knew what was plaguing his brother's dreams.

He sighed, looked up at the waters stained ceiling of the motel room and prayed for assistance. God wanted his brother out of hell, wanted him to help fight this war, but he Dean is useless without sleep, without rest, and the nightmares were making him a less than effective warrior. He sighed again and looked down and he realized that he was still holding his brother's journal. He looked at Dean, then back at the book, wondered for a moment what his brother had written since he last read it. More pages were wrinkled and smeared with his brother's frantic writing than there were the last time. He looked up at Dean again, gave a silent prayer off forgiveness and read

Demons come in all shapes and sizes. They come in every variation of disgusting and disturbing. When they are in human bodies you can only see the evil manifest in their eyes, the simple turn from beautiful human eyes to oil slick black. In the pit, you see their true evil, the true disfigurement that hell has caused. Yeah, a real friggin' picnic.

Some of them have a human shape, but that is where it begins and ends. One or two that enjoyed torturing me, now that I think back because God knows I wasn't forming coherent thoughts while I was there, sort of looked like Windegos. They were tall and spindly. Their faces long and gaunt, teeth long and jagged, like a shark almost. That wasn't exactly the part that was most frightening, I mean yeah sure, that was scary as hell, but what was worse was seeing their eyes, in the pit, their eyes didn't turn black, they stayed the color they originally were, sort of like a reminder that the face you are looking into, the face that is about to enjoy torturing you was human once, that those blue, green, brown or hazel eyes once held someone they loved, once did something other than rip and shred souls.

When me and Sam were at that school and saw one of those masks, my God it reminded me of one of the demons, one of the better equipped demons, who loved taking just small bite size chunks out of me before laughing, his eyes were blue. Ice blue. He was damn good at his job. Too good. His fingers were long, I remember those fingers, they are something I will never forget. They were sort of like Sam's. Real long and real thin. Sometimes when Sam grabs my arm, I can feel that damn demon touching me, that's why I can't let Sam grab hold of my bare skin too often. Triggers too many thoughts, too many horrific experiences of my time there.

What is really horrible…is that those evil sons of bitches could change their shapes. Once you got too used to their real shapes, they would change, mutate…they could look like you, they could look like your loved ones. The first one they used was Mom. I went nuts, hysterical, my own mother spent time torturing me. And what is horrible, truly horrible is that while they are wearing your loved one's face, you believe that it is that person, that what they are saying, is what they truly think and feel about you. You completely forget it is some demon masquerading as your loved one. You just sink that much further into despair.

I had one who looked like Dad, and he kept telling me over and over again how I was such a horrible son, but the worst, yeah, the worst was the one who looked like Sam and continually told me that I was just a puppet, that I didn't have a mind of my own, told me that I wasn't worth anything, that I was just a mindless witless soldier and that I deserved this hell, that he just came down to torture me a little, give a little back so to speak. That was horrible. The man I died for telling me that I was worthless and that he was up there dancing on my grave. Demons. My God.

But at the end of the day, or a least before you become blind, or before you are so shredded by them, they turn back into what they really are. Tall, short, skeletal, fat, disfigured, distorted versions of what humans are…or were. Completely twisted by their own sins and by the tortures of hell.

It's hard to watch horror movies anymore. Hollywood has gotten more right then they have wrong. Makes me really wonder what goes on over there. But I keep watching them, keep trying to keep my game face firmly in place. Keep trying to forget what they looked like, who they embodied. But the dreams…my God the dreams. The blood, their faces, their touches, the heat, the cold, the thirst, the hunger, the pain, the desire, the longing, the fear…oh the fear, it all courses through me, destroys me again, and again and again. It hurts, and I wake up feeling so…disoriented. Like I was just pulled back up from the pit, like I'm back in that pine box, scared and alone. And when I close my eyes just to blink, their faces are there, their twisted sick faces, it's like someone tattooed them on the insides of my eyelids, to make sure I see them, to make sure I remember. Yeah. Like I can forget that.

I can't explain this to Sammy. I don't have the words. I just…..

The last words stopped, the pen mark slid across the page. Dean fell asleep. Sam's eyes were filled with tears, his heart was hurting, and his brother's breathing was beginning to change. Sam stood. He grabbed his brother's shoulder, avoiding direct contact with the skin.

"Dean." His voice gave out on the word. "Dean." He tried again louder. "Dean!" he finally yelled and his brother jerked awake, eyes wide, scared, and lost. "Dean. You're in a motel room. In Illinois. You're okay. You aren't in Hell." Dean nodded frantically and swallowed thickly.

"Kay." He said and sat up and rubbed his eyes. Sam stood there helpless, scared, and lost.